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YesPinoy.com and UnionBank EON card

I just got an email and found out that YesPinoy.com can now load money to Union Bank EON Cards.

This is an interesting development. UnionBank EON Card is VISA Electron Branded and known to be the first free Internet banking facility in the country. Its cardholders can withdraw money from Philippine and worldwide ATMs. The card can also be used for Internet Purchases and pay bills through Internet banking. The EON card can be applied for at any Branch of Union Bank in the Philippines or online.

YesPinoy.com account holders can send money to an EON cardholder. I guess for UnionBank EON cardholders, this is now an opportunity for you to accept payments online as well. Visit the YesPinoy.com site for more details.

Discussion Group and Google Talk

Hello folks. We just revived the Infotech Philippines discussion group at http://groups.google.com/group/ph-infotech. I hope you can join and interact with us on the latest in Infotech developments in and out of the country. We are also taking this opportunity to test the Google Groups service and hope it will work out well.

On the other hand, I got an invite to try Google Talk but I can't seem to connect to it. The server just won't authenticate me. Now I have to ask PLDT WeRoam if it blocks sites/service like Google Talk and Chikka. Will let you know.

Welcome Mike Abundo!

Hello everyone. I like to take this opportunity to welcome our newest contributor in Infotech Philippines and he is DigitalFilipino.com Club member Mike Abundo. We look forward to his write-ups and coverage.

Welcome Mike!

BBC World Challenge - Vote for the Philippine Entry!

I got in my email last week and heeded the request to be disseminated. I hope you can all support this.

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Did you know that the Philippines' coconut geotextile ( a.k.a. coconet) for soil erosion control  has been chosen as one of the 12 finalists in Newsweek and BBC's (British Broadcasting Corporation) World's World Challenge?

The World Challenge is basically a competition/search designed at identifying groups or individuals all over the world whose projects have contributed great impact at grass roots level.

A documentary about Philippine Coconut geotextile or coconet industry will be shown on the BBC World cable channel on September 24  around 8:30 GMT and will also  be featured in the August 29 special issue of Newsweek.

"The World Challenge" already offers a tremendous exposure and publicity to our flourishing Philippine coconut geotextile industry and to our Philippine coconut fiber exporters. But it would be great liberation for our country, which has been getting very bad publicity nowadays, to win this prestigious competition.

To vote, please open http://www.theworldchallenge.co.uk and click the picture of Philippine coconet.

2005 O'Reilly Open Source Convention Wrap Up

The seventh annual O'Reilly Open Source Convention, held in Portland, Oregon, wrapped up earlier this month and by all accounts a wonderful time was had by all 2,400+ attendees.

Several notable awards were bestowed during the Tuesday Evening Extravaganza. Google/O'Reilly Open Source Awards went to: Best Communicator: Doc Searls; Evangelist: Jeff Waugh for (Ubuntu/Gnome); Diplomat: Geir Magnusson Jr..; Integrator: Richard Hipp (SQLite); Hacker: David Heinemeier Hansson (Ruby on Rails). White Camel Awards were given to: Stas Bekman, for mod_perl goodness; Eric Cholet, spam filtering for perl.org; Andy Lester, Perl testing and the Phalanx Project.

A record number of announcements were made during OSCON:
- Business Readiness Ratings: Carnegie Mellon University, Intel, and SpikeSource launched a rating system intended to reduce confusion and guesswork in evaluating such software. More information:
http://www.openbrr.org/

- Covalent Technologies entered the web services arena during OSCON: The leading provider of complete enterprise open source solutions makes an investment in WSO2 to bring full commercial support for Apache axis to the enterprise for the first time. More information: http://www.covalent.com/news/pressreleases.html

- CodeZoo announced Python and Ruby support: O'Reilly's CodeZoo site now includes modules for both Python and Ruby. In addition, CodeZoo now features tags for components. CodeZoo helps developers find good code and use it quickly. More information: http://www.codezoo.com/

- Tersus Software released an open source visual programming platform, unveiling a breakthrough technology for enterprise software development. The Tersus platform enables 100% visual development by drawing business
flow diagrams instead of writing code. More information: http://www.tersus.org/about/press_release_1

- O'Reilly Media launched the beta version of O'Reilly Connection. With the aim of "uniting the global geekforce," O'Reilly Connection is a tech-centric jobs and networking site for developers and those who want to
hire them. The service was conceived and created by Greenplum. More information: http://connection.oreilly.com

- Palamida announced alliances with two major open source organizations, Eclipse Foundation, Inc. and SourceForge.net. In addition to extending the reach of its software intellectual property compliance solution, IP
Amplifier, the new relationships will also ease open source developers' concerns about the utilization of their custom-created intellectual property. More information: http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050802/netu017.html?.v=2

- SpikeSource unveiled a new strategy of providing made-to-order open source stacks of software fully configured and tested for enterprise customers. More information: http://www.spikesource.com/news/080105.html

- MarvelIT delivered its first open source business intelligence suite. Addressing the need for affordable business intelligence solutions for all companies, MarvelIT, Inc. announced the release of the first Life Science/Pharmaceutical Sales and Marketing Analytics based on open source. More information: http://www.marvelit.com/news/pr_080305.pdf

- ActiveGrid unveiled the 1.0 versions of its ActiveGrid Application Builder and its LAMP Application Server.
- Greenplum, JasperSoft, and Kinetic Networks released a new open source business intelligence (BI) development stack available through the Bizgres Project. The integrated technologies provide Java developers with an open source BI alternative with enterprise-class data processing, warehousing and reporting capabilities. More information: http://www.bizgres.org/articles/?id=3

OSCON is where the leaders, practitioners, programmers, developers, and users of every open source persuasion gather to drill down into open source trends. OSCON provides a place for fellow users from the entire spectrum of the open source community to connect with one another and learn about the newest features and versions from creators and experts.

Slides from sessions and tutorials can be found at:
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/pub/w/38/presentations.html

Call for Participation Opens for the 2006 O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference

I spoke in this event 4 years ago. I remembered at that time, one of the hottest topic was blogging. For those who are interested to see what will be hot in the future, this is the place to be. In my opinion, this is where the innovative geeks converge.

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ETech--the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference--has just issued the call for participation for the 2006 edition of the annual event. Technologists, CTOs, chief scientists, researchers, programmers, hackers, business developers, entrepreneurs, and other interested parties are invited to ETech to lead conference sessions and tutorials. Topics will be loosely gathered around the cutting-edge techniques and technologies highly prolific geeks employ and invent to help focus (and filter) the immense amount of data now pouring into everyday life. The 2006 O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference will happen March 6-9 at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego, California. Proposals are due no later than September 19, 2005.

It's no longer about generating digital data--we have more than enough already. The challenge is now: How do we visualize the data, filter it, remix it, and access it in ways meaningful to us? The opportunity created by the massive data web is one of social good, personal benefit, and business advantage.  Some of the specific topics on the radar for the next ETech are:

- Aggregation, Attention, and Attenuation

 What tools and techniques have alpha geeks and research labs produced and remix ecosystem encourages design for the people who will use it. In many subtle and not-so-subtle ways we're seeing user experience and design returning to software. How does one escape the standard database-view-as-application of the 90s? What developments in UI and HCI design promise to empower users rather than confuse and overwhelm them?

- You Can Take It With You

 With a global population always on the move, how do we marry the of end-to-end applications to the power of disconnected operation? What techniques let us successfully take disconnected web applications and then resynchronize when we are next connected?

- Data as Platform

 With Google joining the ranks of water, power, and gas as an assumed utility (at least in the popular mindset), are there more data sources and services in our midst that are all but assumed to be there? How can data
 visualization use our cognitive preattention to assimilate data quickly, rather than just paging through a database view? Will remixing always be a hack, or are there ways to offer stable commercial services around remixed applications?

- Business

 What will the new business models look like? Will we simply fall back into our old 90s habits? Or, perhaps worse, shy away from taking the risks needed for truly innovative ideas to have a chance?

- Radar Traces

 What's keeping the alpha geeks up at night, noodling, writing code, and pushing the edge? What are they building in their garage that will change the world, surprise and delight us, or simply shake us out of our
 assumptions?

The O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference features a range of technologies that are growing just below the horizon of commercial viability, and place a spotlight on projects, people, and business models likely to become very important to the future of internet computing. From peer-to-peer networks, person-to-person mobile messaging, web services, and weblogs to big screen digital media, small screen mobile gaming, hardware hacking, and content remixing, ETech pries open the important new technologies destined show up in the products and services we're all taking for granted in the not-too-distant future.

Additional Information:

For complete details and to submit a proposal, visit:
http://conferences.oreilly.com/etech

FreeNX-0.5.0 launched

Leaders of the FreeNX development project announced the upcoming release of FreeNX-0.5.0, "The LWE San Francisco Release -- 'Seamless Printing' Edition." The general public is free to download this new version of the software http://debian.tu-bs.de/knoppix/nx/lwe-release/

FreeNX is a Free terminal server software. It is based on the NX Core Libraries released by NoMachine.com under the GPL Free Software license. The program connects a local workstations to remote desktop PCs, servers or individual applications running remotely, independent of the underlying operating system. FreeNX is differentiated from other remote access software products by its ability to present a snappy, life-like remote desktop experience even over low-bandwidth (dial-up) connectivity. Its broadband remote performance is also outstanding. The new "seamless printing" feature enables Linux users to print from within their remotely running sessions to their local printers without any additional setting ("zero-config") and without needing to install an NX session printer driver ("seamless").

NX is a product of Nomachine, of Rome, Italy. NoMachine sells licenses and support for the full-blown product. NoMachine have donated the NX Core libraries to the Open Source world and support the FreeNX Project to implement a fully GPL'd implementation of an NX server that is also technically compatible with their commercial offering so that all users who are not in need of professional support can enjoy remote desktop computing.

FreeNX is Free Software.  It is free to use and redistribute under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).  The FreeNX project is hosted at freenx.berlios.de. Its community of developers welcomes participation and new contributions from technologists, students, companies and other interested parties.

Using PLDT WeRoam

I started using PLDT WeRoam last June. I often receive a lot of question about it and hope this can help.

1. Where can you use your PLDTWeRoam?
Anywhere in the Philippines for as long as that area has Smart cellphone signal with GPRS or EDGE service in the area. Your AirCard Watcher should be able to tell you if there's a signal available.

2. How much is PLDTWeRoam?
Usually, there's a downpayment needed and the monthly fee is P2000. I heard that some companies were able to get a much cheaper rate depending on volume.

3. Can anyone just get a PLDT WeRoam?
From what I heard, no. Your company must be a corporate subscriber of PLDT's services. However, you can apply to become but must be ready to submit the documentary requirements asked for. As the AirCard is quite expensive, a lot of due diligence is made.

4. I heard the service is slow?
Actually, it depends on how you look at it. In my case, I find the service to be as good as dial-up with the mobility advantage which is of utmost importance for me. If you like to upload or download big files, it is best to do so when you an EDGE signal.

5. How has the service affected your Internet usage?
I surf, read, and blog more as a result. I became 2 to 3 times more active online. Disciplined and sensible Internet use though is up to us. I also like the idea that I don't have to use our landline phone when connecting to the Internet.

I hope this helps.

Bloggers: Join Warm Bodies 3: Nostalgia Galore

I got this from Sky's blog:

The editors of Warm Bodies are now accepting entries for its third offering, tentatively titled Nostalgia Galore. Submissions should be reflective of the era most of us grew up with, from the late 70's up to the 80's. Aqua Net, Mazinger Z, leg warmers and Young Love, Sweet Love, to name a few, wishing it was 1984 again when Kuya Bodjie and Ate Sienna helped us get through the day. If interested, check out the mechanics.

In the first edition “Warm Bodies: The Kris Aquino Complex,” bloggers gave their insight on a specific issue and connect it with their lives, much like what the actress is famous for. The 2nd edition, “Warm Bodies 2: Orange Sunset” is a compilation of selected bloggers’ interpretation of the theme Change.

ACPI's New Officers for 2005-2007

The Animation Council of the Philippines just elected its new set of officers for 2005 to 2007. They are:

President             - Marlyn Montano (Holy Cow! Animation Studio)
Vice President     - Grace Dimaranan (Top Peg Creative & Animation Studio)
Secretary            - Rom Verdan (Cadweb Business Solutions)
Treasurer            - Nestor Palabrica (TOEI Animation)
Member/Head of Education Committee - Ludet Gopalan (Navel Productions)
Member/Head of PR/Media Com - Michelle Casio (Mapua IT Center)
Member/Head of Membership Com - Richard Padilla (Challenge Systems)

Congratulations and more power to ACPI!

Also, congratulations as well to DigitalFilipino.com Club Member Rom Verdan for being one of the board of directors of ACPI. Kudos to you Rom!

Innovista Wins APC Asean Distributor of the Year Award

Innovista Technologies, a large business solutions providers was recently feted with the APC Distributor of the Year for Consumer Network Group and Distributor of the Year - Grand Award citations at the first American Power Conversion (APC) Asean Distributor’s Conference in Singapore recently.

The Grand Award was given to Innovista in consideration of the company’s strong  performance based on sales growth against its revenue target.  The basis for the Distributor of the Year for CNG was revenue and shipment growth for the same year. Innovista beat 14 other distributors in these markets for the grand prize.

APC has six countries in its Asean region namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

LINUXWORLD PHILIPPINES 2005

On September 14 – 16, 2005, Media G8way Corp. will stage LINUXWORLD PHILIPPINES 2005 at Dusit Hotel Nikko, Makati City.

The conference targets big—as well as small and medium- enterprises with information and resources to implement Linux and other Open Source solutions to increase their productivity and profitability of their businesses.

For inquiries, call 812-8401 to 03 loc. 146/164 or thru [email protected] and look for Carla/Anne.

Call for regional entries! Philippine Schools CyberFair 2006: Inspire and Unite!

Attention: All elementary and high school teachers!

Engage students in performance-based, collaborative, project-design competition this school year 2005-2006!

- Support standards-based, authentic learning
- Connect students to their local communities
- Increase students' global perspective
- Increase real-world, transferable skills
- Involve students in the assessment
- Teach students information-age skills (research, project management, publishing, digital media)

DigitalFilipino.com is launching the 5th Philippines School CyberFair Project with the theme, "Inspire and Unite". This competition encourages students to "shine the spotlight" on people, places, businesses and other things in their local community -- that serve to "inspire, motivate, and encourage positive change."

All Philippine entries shall also join the International School CyberFair. On its 11th year, it has been described as the largest educational event of its kind ever held on the Internet. This program has brought together more than one million students from over 100 countries.

It is also an authentic learning program used by schools and youth organizations around the world. Youth conduct research and publish their findings on the Web. Recognition is given to the best projects in each of eight categories: local leaders, businesses, community organizations, historical landmarks, environment, music, art, and local specialties. This program encourages youth to become community ambassadors by working collaboratively and using technology to share what they have learned. Students evaluate each other's projects by using a unique online evaluation tool.

CyberFair encourages youth to connect the knowledge they learn in school to real world applications. It also supports current education subjects such as Filipino, English, Computer, Social Studies, Science, Music, Practical Arts, Character Education, among others.

This year, schools can submit multiple entries. However, it should only be limited to one entry, per category, per division (elementary / high school). All entries must be written and presented in English and Filipino.

We are launching earlier this year to give way to the regional competition. Prizes this year includes:

Regional level (August to November 2005)
- Trophy for the school, medal for students
- Regional IT leadership convention for all Cyberfair participants

Note that regions with less than 40 entries shall be merged with nearby regions or be directly included in the national competition.

National level (November 2005 to March 2006)
- Trophy for the school, medal for students
- National IT leadership convention for all Cyberfair participants
- Train the teachers on E-Learning Content Development 5-days workshop

For more details, visit http://www.cyberfair.ph

Do you like to support the Philippine Schools CyberFair 2006? Here's how.

1. Disseminate this information to the schools in your area.
2. Coach teachers and students in preparing the CyberFair entry.
3. Volunteer as a reviewer of website entries.
4. If you are from the media or have a blog, write or talk about this initiative.
5. Become a corporate sponsor by providing resources needed for this project.
6. Become an individual supporter by buying a book, e-book, research report, or become a club member at http://www.digitalfilipino.com

Online digital scrapping resource

Just got word from Mommyba that her 3Scrapateers website is now back online. Digiscrappers will surely find this site interesting with lots of activities to choose from. It also has contests and promotions for its website members. Check it out.

Do yo know of other digiscrapping resources? Let us know!

Holiday-swapping for Persons with Disability

In the past we've written an article about ICT for Persons with Disability. Someone from the UK has read it and forwarded this information to me about a service for PWDs.

This is a website service http://www.matchinghouses.com formed by a group of people, 50% of whom have disabilities. This is to help disabled people to travel more confidently, knowing that the accommodation they are travelling to is fully accessible. One of the aspects of the site is that it is not geographically specific, in that people could well use it in Africa, UK, Europe, Australia, America, or anywhere else in the world for holiday-swapping their properties.

For those who have tried this service, would like to hear your experience.

 

August 25-26: The 4th National E-Learning Conference

For those of you interested in e-learning, note that the 4th National E-Learning Conference is set to take place this August 25 to 26 at the University of Sto. Tomas in Manila. This year's theme is "eLearning: Promoting Creative ICT Use." The forum will focus on three thematic discussion areas. They are:

Creative use of ICT in education
Encouraging creativity among ICT professionals
Teaching/learning creativity with ICT

Some of their speakers include CICT Commissioner Virgilio Pena, ASTI Director Denis Villorente, and PSIA President Fermin Taruc.

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On the other side of the world, "eLearning Africa - eLA", the first Pan-African conference on
ICT for Development, Education and Training will be held in Addis Ababa, 17 - 19 May 2006.

eLA has the Patronage of H.E. Tefera Waluwa, the Ethiopian Minister for Capacity Building and is - so far - supported by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the African Capacity Building Foundation, and the European Commission, Directorate General Information Society Technologies and Media.

The conference is organised by ICWE and Hoffmann & Reif Consultants. ICWE organises the largest annual international eLearning conference every year in Berlin with more than 2000 participants:
http://www.online-educa.com

Thanks to Leopold Reif for sharing this information. Hoffmann & Reif have been engaged in "ICT for Development" and eLearning projects in Africa, Asia and Europe since 1995: http://www.hoffmann-reif.com

Outsourcing Executive Retires

Felipe Manalang just decided to move on from his current job as President/CEO of Fujitsu Philippines Inc. (FPI), as well as from all his other executive positions in the various subsidiaries/affiliates of the company, effective the end of July 2005.

Manalang left Fujitsu with a legacy of being able to achieved the critical mass needed for long-term continuity. He grew the company from a P100-million hardware trading business, into a P2.5 billion solutions integration and service business.

He is also leaving with no doubts as to the long-term viability of the business. He presided over the good times of non-stop go-go growth in the mid/late 1990’s, as well as the business difficulties during the political turbulence and economic downturn in 2002-2004. In October 2003, the company downsized from 1000 to 840 employees as software projects declined, when the US economy weakened.

He is also one of the believers that the country should not compete head on with India but needs to consider Vietnam and China as the country's immediate competitor.

(UPDATE - 8/5/05)

FPI just announced the appointment of Peter G. Tan as President and CEO of FPI effective August 1, 2005. Tan first joined FPI in 1981 and became President of Wesolv Open Computing Inc., a subsidiary of FPI, in August, 2000. The company also announced the promotion of Raul A, Santiago III to Executive Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). Santiago joined FPI as Marketing Director in October, 2000.

Senator Mar Roxas Speech at Cebu ICT 2005

This is the speech delivered by Senator Mar Roxas during the Cebu ICT 2005 event last June 22.

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I’m happy to be here in Cebu and as I’m sure many of you particularly those who likewise came in from Manila. It’s our way of expressing to each other that sometimes, one needs to leave Manila to get a fresh perspective on matters.

 

I’m so proud and please to be in attendance here at this first Cebu International IT Fair.

 

I remember my coming here about four years ago to the first Cebu IT Summit, what it was then called “Cebu IT Summit” – it was in the early part of this journey where the IT-Service or E-enabled space in the business process was not a very well known or well publicized concept or activity, even if it was as being actively promoted already by government through the Department of Trade and Industry.

 

About five years ago, the industry leaders and the DTI all convened in the ballroom similar to this and wrote out the – I wouldn’t call it a master plan, but guiding principles that would govern private sector and government sector participation and involvement in the development of this space.

 

One of the key considerations that was present in that of sort of guiding principles was that it would be private sector driven and true to form. If it was private sector driven meaning with as little government intervention as possible.

 

What was once a nascent small sort of under reported and unreported or unknown industry has now blossomed to what it is today a billion dollars in service export in the last year, eight billion pesos in investments, hundred thousand jobs, and an annual absorption capacity of more that 30,000 jobs a  year.

 

So clearly there is vibrancy, excitement, and there is a private sector entrepreneurial spirit initiative that is present in this space. And all of this success really is due to all of the hard effort of the members of the private sector who are all here this morning.

 

IT in business

The success that we’re experiencing today in a manner of speaking is IT – what I would describe is IT in business meaning using or employing the capabilities that IT is able to provide in the conduct of business. Hence, a lot of the “IT-ability” that is now being undertaken in our country is in what is known as business process outsourcing - whether that’s a call center or transcription or engineering, architecture or legal transcription whether legal or medical and so on and so forth.

 

IT as a business

It is in the nature of IT in the conduct of business that we have outstanding success. I believe that even as we are successful in this space, we are also now beginning to undertake in a much more aggressive fashion IT as a business, not in the conduct of business but IT as a business. So we have seen now the sprouting of independent third party operations that were once not very much present in our country but now, in an ever increasing number, coming here, making the investments, whether in start-up fashion or in mezzanine fashion, but clearly coming in to our country and doing IT as a business.

 

Historically the IT activities in our country were internal operations of the large multinationals. Because of the evolution of the way businesses are conducted globally, we now see third party outsourcing of the same activities.

 

We’re very happy to note that not only are we successful in the activities of IT in business, creating all those jobs and investment and export service, but now as well we are growing IT as a business. We’re now beginning to become much more aggressive in IT as a business.

 

IT for business

However, I think what is more important for our domestic economy as well as for our standing in the international global IT space is if we also begin to think about IT for business. What do I mean by that and what is the challenge that is represented by IT for business?

 

Today in our country we have about 870,000 firms registered, both of the Securities and Exchange Commission as well as in the Department of Trade and Industry. Sadly however, 99% of those firms are registered as micro, small and medium enterprises. None of those 99% are in this room here today.

 

They create about 25% of total gross value added in our economy. They provide about 1/3 of the total labor for our entire economy but one can see clearly that it is asymmetric.

 

While representing nearly a 100% of total registered enterprises, they only are a quarter of the gross value added and only provide a 3^rd of the employment. 

 

If you ask now, “So what is the connection between that and IT for business?” Well I believe that the one way that these firms are “affecting” our entire economy can be competitive approach, a modicum of the ability to compete in this globalized and liberalized world were goods and services are going to be coming in and out of borders at a much more accelerated pace.

 

If they are able to introduce IT in the conduct of their business efforts, such as consolidated procurement like BayanTrade and similar other trading spaces, these are steps in the right direction.

 

What I’d like for you, the participants here, the private sector, to begin to think about and discuss in your workshop, coffee break, and in your networking sort of interactions, is to begin to think about yes we have been able to create jobs, we have a business model, we were providing services of IT in business for others, yes there are some here who are in the conduct of business of IT as a business. But now, the real big challenge for us is, “How do we begin to think about making IT in the business of all the others in our country?”

 

Clearly our economic development cannot be dependent on one sector alone even as it is so successful as your sector has been. Our economic development will only come about if we have an ever increasing number of firms that are able to be competitive in this globalized space.

 

Secretary Santos talked a little bit about JPEPA – the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement and the bringing out or the soliciting from the private sector the negotiating points that government must undertake. Even as he has brought this to your attention, there are several other agreements that our country and that the DTI is negotiating in behalf of our country. These include the Free Trade Agreement with China through ASEAN, Free Trade Agreement with India through ASEAN as well, and the Free Trade Agreement of ASEAN with Japan. The United States also. There are sectors in the US that are exploring whether there is any appetite for a free trade agreement with the U.S. and the Philippines and so on and so forth.

 

So, if are to take a look at the horizon before all of you as practitioners, as business people, as professionals, and as member of the IT community, one will see that the borders are going to continue to come down.

 

The only question is at what pace. One will see that the phenomenon of integration will continue to happen and again the only question is at what pace. And if one were to take a look around the Philippine economy, one will see that yes, 99% of the firms registered in our country are not players in this space and the only way that they can be players is if there is some melding, collaboration, and integration of what you have and what they have.

 

In so doing, be able to obtain for themselves the economies of scale, the access to technology, the access to market, access to finance and access to information, and so on and so forth, that you had been able to provide for yourselves, for your clients, and for the participants in the IT space.

 

By way of ending I’d like to tell you about the book I recently read, it’s called “The World is Flat” by Thomas Friedman. He is a noted thinker and a columnist for the New York Times. Maybe you know him because he wrote the “The Lexus and the Olive Tree” which is a best seller a few years ago.

 

His whole contention in that book, as the title implies - the world is flat - and what flattens the world is technology, telco, finance, and everything. Technology has enabled some worker to aspire for a job that is being undertaken in some other place. It’s been good for us because now we’re able to perform the jobs that used to be performed in other countries. But it is also a challenge for us because it will allow other countries lower in the economic food chain to aspire for jobs that are in our country - and that is what I’m talking about, not only IT jobs but the 99% of the firms in our economy that don’t have access to these technology. 

 

The flattening of the world is manifested as you all know by the merger, acquisition and combinations of all the firms. Witness in your own space IBM and the Chinese company Lenovo, the car auto companies are merging.

 

All of these barriers are coming down in the corporate space because of the pursuit of economies of scale and competitiveness. 

 

The model of Walmart, one of the successful and most valuable companies in the world, think about it, Walmart does not make any one thing. Walmart simply provides space for products to get to a consumer at an affordable value for money proposition. That is what drives business today. With your inputs and participation in the creation of not only jobs and IT in business, but as well in creation of activity, new technology, and new undertaking, when you undertake IT as a business, then also you will surely and hopefully, in a much more aggressive manner, address IT for business – for businesses here in our country.

 

Only then can we say that our firms have a chance to compete in this globalized arena.

MITC 4th Anniversary

The Mapua IT Center is currently having its 4th anniversary celebration. Concurrently, PC Buyers Guide is holding an ICT roadshow "The Digital Showcase" with MITC as its first stop. This event is taking place today till August 3.

Four competition activities are launched today that includes a 24-hour Digital Photo Race, Image Re-configuration, Animated Short Film, and an IDN sponsored competition.

There are also 3 plenary sessions on Trends and Issues, Art Meets Application, and Internet, Gaming, and Security. Apart from us, other invited speakers are CICT Commissioner Dondi Mapa, Dr. Jaime Caro of UP-ITTC, journalist Selwyn Clyde Alojipan, Grisoft CTO Karen Obluk, and Ranulf Goss, chairman of the International Game Developers Association.

The PC Buyer's Guide ICT Roadshow will be making several colleges/university stops this year. We'll keep you posted.

Make it Bicol!

I just got a letter lately about the 1st Bicol Business Week with the theme, "Make it Bicol!" on August 30 to September 2 to be held at Naga Regent Hotels, Romer Building, Elias Angeles St., Naga City.

I find this event interesting as Bicol has become a manpower resource for some of the biggest outsourcing centers today. Some of its event activities includes: Bicol Skills Summit (August 29), Bicol Businessmen Symposium (August 30), Technology Transfer Forum (August 31), Job Fair (September 1 to 2), among others.

Parties interested about this event can email [email protected] and [email protected].

Tele-medicine in Cotabato City